Acting Like He Cares

The concept of a celebrity endorsement is a popular subject on this blog. My fascination with the subject doesn't have anything to do with the idea of using a celebrity to try and sell a product - that part makes sense - but because I am always interested in seeing which celebrities get paired with certain products. Whether it is Shaquille O'Neal and Tiger Woods trying to sell cars that they would never drive in real life or some broken-down reality star pitching an infomercial in a desperate attempt to keep their 15 minutes of fame from expiring, I would just love to know the thought process which these companies use when negotiating an endorsement contract. I feel pretty safe to assume that the smaller the budget the happier they are to just take anyone with name recognition, no matter how notorious. Let's be honest, when you only have a little money to spend on advertising you have to be pleased if anyone says yes. However, if you are about to film your first national commercial for a product you spent years developing I would imagine that you would want to be slightly picky. The last thing you want is your product forever associated with some actor that everyone now hates. Of course, all bets are off if you are a major product and give the advertising agency you hired an unlimited budget, because then it becomes about getting the biggest star possible. Plus the better the actor the better job they will do acting like the really love the product. I'm just wondering where exactly the concept of celebrity-endorsed TV shows fall in this hierarchy.

The idea of having a celebrity endorse a television show is nothing new. There have been dozens of television shows throughout history which only got on the air because a celebrity agreed to attach their name to the project and the entire marketing campaign was based around their involvement. (Do you think the "Bing Crosby Christmas Special" gets on the air if Crosby doesn't lend him name to it?) This is especially true in the case of science shows because often getting a celebrity involved is the only way to get some people to pay attention, even though they never do much more than narrate the series and leave the heavy science lifting to the people who are qualified to talk about these issues. Plus, there is no denying it makes for a catchier title. "Through the Wormhole With Some Guy You've Never Heard Of But Who Has A PhD" doesn't quite have the ring of the same show hosted by Morgan Freeman. (Also, you don't spend the first 20 minutes trying to figure out if that voice you hear is actually Morgan Freeman or just some actor paid to sound like him.) In some ways I am surprised it doesn't happen more often given the number of specials which air throughout the year but I can only assume that is a result of fame being more fleeting than ever. After all, why would you want to revolve a show around a person who could be forgotten by this time next year? Better to involve as many quasi-celebrities as possible and hope that at least one or two of them still have some name recognition by the time the program goes into reruns.

The reason I bring this up is because I keep seeing these ads on the Discovery Channel for a new show hosted by James Woods called, "Futurescape with James Woods." The idea behind the show is that every week Woods will look at a different issue facing mankind and the ways in which we are planning to deal with those issues. The show will also highlight recent technological breakthroughs and how they could alter our future. For example, what would happen if we actually got our act together and figured out how to travel to other solar systems? It's all very heavy stuff and could be a very interesting program to watch. The only thing is I am not quite sure what James Woods has to do with any of it. As far as I know he doesn't have a science background (according to Wikipedia he went to MIT but it was for political science and he intended to go into medicine) and he hasn't even done that many sci-fi movies, so this isn't like when James Cameron anointed himself an expert on all things related to the Titanic just because he made a movie about it. As near as I can tell they named the show after him because he is a famous actor and he happened to be available when they were filming. I'm not saying that is a bad thing for Woods - I once saw a stat that on any given day 80% of the Screen Actors Guild is unemployed, so you take whatever work you can get - I am just not sure why the Discovery Channel would be so eager to attach Woods's name to the project that he would get top billing and not simply credit as host.

I guess the problem is that this is just another example of the Discovery Channel, the one place on TV which is supposed to be above this kind of thing, falling back on that oldest of TV gimmicks - the celebrity guest spot during sweeps week. Normally this stunt is pulled by shows desperate to catch a few more eyes and stay on the air, but the Discovery Channel is taking the step of just giving them their own shows, which is worse. They are starting to become one of those networks which tries way too hard to shoe-horn celebrity guest appearances where there shouldn't be any. (The worst was when George Foreman showed up on "Fast & Loud". I still have no idea what the point of that was.) But even though I have slowly talked myself into the premise of this show, James Woods is an odd choice for the host. Even though I know the whole idea of using an actor is just to trick me into believing they care about a subject or a product, when it comes to stuff like this I want to at least have a faint glimmer of hope that they signed up for it because they are genuinely interested in the topic. But Woods is one of those old-school celebrities in that he's never being attacked by paparazzi and thus I don't know much about his hobbies or the subjects which interest him. Normally I would find that admirable but in this case it is working against him because I can't help but hear the show title and think, "Why do I care what James Woods thinks the future will look like?" Still, at least I can believe that James Woods has thoughts about the future more than I will ever believe Chuck Norris still uses the Total Gym.